


Pages from a notebook

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Organised Crime, Multi, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 05:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6787999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of unrelated short fics taken from <a href="http://fullofstoryshapes.tumblr.com">my writing blog</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wanda&Pietro "It's okay, I couldn't sleep anyway."

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts are always open on the blog!

“You ought to sleep more,” Wanda says, pushing Pietro down into the pillow, allowing herself a moment to run her fingers through his hair. Sometimes, when they are affectionate toward one another in public, people stare at them, and Wanda sees the echoes of disgust.

She has never seen Pietro like that, nor he her, but others see that which they wish to see. She has known this for a long time. She does not like it, but she knows it. 

“I need less sleep than you,” Pietro says, as if she does not know this for an excuse. Wanda can feel the rabbit-fast pulse of his heart in her own chest, sometimes, when they are fighting and it becomes hard to pull her scarlet from his blue, when they seem wholly purple. His heart beats twice as fast as her own, blood throbbing in his veins so hard it would surely burst hers, and it is that rapidity of self that keeps him awake, even as shadows burn beneath his overbright eyes, making them like stars in the pale dawn sky. 

If she wished it, she could slow his heart, and coax his soul to dream. It is within her power, readily so, and she can even see the shapes her fingers would take as they soothed his body to sleep and his mind to rest. Magic or telepathy or whatever this is, she could use it to make Pietro’s life easier.

Or shorter. 

How is she to know what slowing his heart might do to him? If she slows it too much, will it stop the flow of his lifeblood through his body? Will the font of his clever mind run dry, his bright eyes dull? She could not bear it. She has lost him once already, by a hand other than her own, and the pain had almost taken her into the dark in his wake. If she were to strike him down, even by accident…

No. Best to sit with him, to piece together lullabies from shared fragments of their mother’s voice in their little half-and-half bedroom, which was red and blue but became grey the day their mother’s voice stopped. So long as she sits with him, she can watch for the nightmares that chase away his dreams, the holes in his memory that hide what lies beyond this life and allow in past horrors, real and imagined. So long as she sits with him, she can keep him safe.

She can sleep tomorrow, while she is supposed to be training with the Captain. He will understand, she thinks. 

* * *

“But why is she so tired?” Pietro asks, frustrated when Natalia and Yasha have no answers for him - or, when they have answers, but refuse to share them. “You must know, surely you must know, you are her closest companions here aside from the Vision!”

Russian is a language close enough to Sokovian that Pietro never slips while using it, and it is a language that allows for him to keep these conversations with the Widow and the Captain private, even when Stark and Rhodes are so close by that they might hear. Pietro admires Rhodes, and understands Stark better than he might like, but he still cannot trust them, and does not think that they hold it against him. 

“Perhaps,” the Widow says, her accent so wholly Moscow ( _Stalingrad_ , Wanda had whispered, _from the in-between times)_ , “you ought to ask her yourself, Pietro. I thought you shared everything between you?”

From anyone else, there would be an insinuation behind those words that would raise Pietro’s quicker-than-ever temper like nothing else, but from Natalia, there is only genuine curiosity, and concern.

“I do not wish to upset her,” he admits. “Ever since I was-”

He hesitates, unsure - his resurrection was the price paid to Wanda for services apparently rendered, but the double-cross had not come quick enough, and it was neither he nor she who bore the cost. 

Natalia and Yasha look to one another, so fleeting that anyone else would miss it, and back to him. Yasha’s eyes are cool, as they always are, but full of sympathy and compassion.

“I was you,” he says, reaching across his chest to press his hand over the socket for his false arm. “And in hiding away parts of myself changed by my experiences, I hurt the one person who sought to save and protect me. You are doing the same, Pietro.”

“Yasha, I did not mean to bring up- to remind you of-”

“I know,” Yasha says, and shrugs. “I think that it is better to remember him. But Wanda does not have to remember you - you are here, and so is she. Go to her. Ask her why she does not sleep at night.”

* * *

“I do not sleep because you do not sleep,” Wanda says, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world - because it is. How is she to sleep if he is awake, heart thundering loud enough to wake the whole world? His mind is her mind, in a way, because she is so attuned to him. Of _course_  she would wake when he wakes.

“But-”

More hesitation. He hates to do it, hates to be unsure, but he finds himself as such more and more, since his return. 

“But Wanda,” he says, “I don’t think that I ever sleep anymore.”

“You don’t,” she agrees. “You dream, sometimes. And you rest. But you have not slept as you used to sleep even once since you were given back to me.”

“But you _must_  sleep!” he insists, angry with her now. “Wanda, you are not me, you could _die!”_

“I sleep during the day,” she says, shrugging in a way learned from Yasha. “Sometimes I sleep when I should be training with the Captain, because he never dares reprimand me. Sometimes I convince Clint that I have been paying attention, because I can turn off his hearing aids and he never hears me snoring. It is easier than you might believe, Pietro. I am well.”

She reaches across the table and pats his cheek, tweaking his dimple when he manages a smile.

“I will sleep at night when _you_  sleep at night,” she promises him. “But for now, allow me to protect you as I could not at Novi Grad.”


	2. Steve/Darcy "It's two sugars, right?"

There wasn’t usually anyone else in the communal kitchen at three in the morning, so Steve was a little surprised to find the light above the stove on when he rounded the corner. 

“Hey, no, I get that,” Darcy was saying, phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder. Steve stood back, watching as she poked through the cupboards, feeling a little like he was intruding. “Kid, you’ve got to remember, I have _so_  much more experience with them than you.”

Steve cleared his throat, not wanting to overhear more of a personal conversation, and Darcy didn’t even look surprised. She just held up a fingerand turned her back to him for a minute.

“Okay kid, here’s what you’re gonna do,” she said. “First, you’re gonna make oatmeal on water, and pour that into his gym shoes. Second, you’re gonna get a can of _coloured_  hairspray and you’re going to doctor that label, just like I showed you, and swap it out for her school hairspray. Then, the glorious caketopper, the best part of the plan: you’re gonna rat them out like _shit_  to the boss lady. Got it? Okay, now you go grab some shut eye, and call me whenever it’s done. Love ya, pup.”

Her phone was already in her pocket by the time she spun around to face him, and she looked more tired and out of sorts than Steve felt.

“Siblings,” she said, shrugging off his unspoken question. “You love some, you tolerate some. It’s all about balance.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he admitted, reaching over her head for Nat’s sleepy-time tea. He’d pay for it when they sparred in the morning, because Nat didn’t take kindly to anyone taking her tea, but it was one of the few things that really helped him nod off when he got like this. “Only child.”

“Momma’s golden boy, I’m guessing,” she teased, adding cinnamon and nutmeg to a saucepan of milk before putting it on the stove. “Always helping old ladies with their groceries, and saving kids from industrial accidents.”

“Might’ve done, if I hadn’t been closer to Jane’s size than Thor’s, back in the day,” he said lightly, flicking the switch on the kettle - definitely one of the best things about this century was all the easy ways to make hot water - and settling at the breakfast bar. “And if I hadn’t been an asthmatic before Ventolin had been invented.”

“Harsh,” Darcy agreed, tapping the pocket of her dressing gown where she always kept her Ventolin inhaler, just in case. “I bet you were a total momma’s boy, though. What’d she think of you ending up as Captain Beefcake, Fighter of Nazis?”

“Well,” Steve said, as casually as he could manage, “she was dead a good two yearss before I got beefed, but I think she might’ve approved. She liked to fight the good fight and all.”

“Steve, I’m so-”

“The history books don’t talk about ma,” he said, waving it away, even though it still stung to think about her wasting away. “She was a nurse on a TB ward. It was inevitable.”

“Still,” Darcy said. “Sucks, bro.”

That made him laugh, and he made his tea while Darcy stirred cocoa into her hot milk. It was quiet for a while, except for clinking spoons and shuffling slippers, and then he handed her the sugar bowl.

“Two sugars, right?”

“Oh, Steve,” she sighed, patting his cheek and shaking her head. “You are too good for this world, old man.”

“Thanks?”

“If you can tell me how I take my coffee,” Darcy said, “I will marry you, if you are unwed by the time of your thirtieth birthday. The one you’re awake for.”

“I turned thirty last year, Darce,” he reminded her. “You threw me a party. Thor brought mead. You held back Jane’s hair while she vomited in Tony’s aloe vera plant.”

“Oh man, I did, didn’t I?” she said, grinning at him over her hot chocolate. “Well, guess that means you’re one correct coffee order away from a super hot wife with _all_  the clearance, _and_  mad skills with shortcrust pastry.”

“I do like shortcrust,” Steve agreed. “How about I bring you a coffee tomorrow lunchtime, see if I need to buy a diamond?”

Darcy laughed at that, bright and lovely, and slipped past him with her cup in hand.

“Marquis cut,” she called back over her shoulder, “yellow gold. But you’ll have to ask my old man’s permission first, or he’ll kill you. And probably Thor’s? I don’t get the nuance of the whole shield-sister thing we’ve got going on.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, only looking away from his tea when she called his name.

“Congrats by the way, Steve-o,” she said softly, not quite meeting his eyes. “It’s only taken you _our entire acquaintance_  to buy me a coffee.”


	3. Sansa/Willas "Stay there, I'm coming to get you."

“I think,” Willas said, his voice high and uneven, distant through the ringing in Sansa’s ears, “that my good leg is broken.”

“Stay where you are,” Sansa said, spitting blood and what she thought might be a tooth into the ditch before hauling herself to her feet. “I’m coming to get you.”

The fire crackled loud enough for her to hear it, and while its presence was a comfort, it wasn’t enough. Sansa drew her revolver, just to be safe, and her torch, to make sure there were no more booby traps. 

Bombs in the road were becoming more common, which worried her - a turf war was one thing, but the reckless disregard for civilians that was being shown lately was horrifying, and would inevitably end with the city turning on them all. They couldn’t afford that, not now that they were so close to legitimacy, but none of the others seemed to realise it.

Sansa would make sure that the Starks went straight, and the Tyrells with them, even if it killed her. Given that tonight’s accident was their third in four weeks, she was beginning to worry that it just might.

“Here, love,” Willas called, trapped under what looked terribly like the radiator - on his good leg, of course it was on his good leg - and waving his hat as if hailing her in the park. “Give me a hand with this, will you?”

Sirens blared in the distance, and the car belched white-hot green-burning flames as Sansa pulled off her ermine and tucked it around Willas, who was so pale that he was surely going into shock, and then she planted her feet, set her shoulders, and set to hauling the radiator off of him. 

He screamed, just a little, and it took more than she’d like to resist the urge to comfort him. 

“Just,” she grunted, “a little more, love.”

He’d quietened down by the time she settled on her knees beside him, her scarf unfolded and spread over his newly bad leg, to hide it until the ambulance arrived. In the light of her torch and the car fire, he was sickly pale, but his eyes were sharp and sensible, as they always were.

“Lannisters or Targaryens?” he asked, nodding to the car. “I’d guess Lannisters, but we have been edging a little further east - maybe the Dragons are finally getting involved?”

“Lannisters,” she confirmed, holding up a piece of steel that could only be from the bomb - it had been on the ground right in front of her face, once she’d gotten her sense back after the explosion. “They just can’t help themselves.”

The inside of the steel was gilded, and they had no way to explain to the paramedics why Willas was in tears of laughter without risking more danger. It was worth it, though, because it got him into the first ambulance before he realised that Sansa was bleeding. He always fussed so when she got hurt.


	4. Sam/Steve, "I was in the neighbourhood"

“Sure you were,” Steve says, as if Sam doesn’t live right across the hall, and he steps back to let Sam in. 

Their individual apartments within the complex are as luxurious and tech-heavy as anyone could want, thanks to Tony’s generosity and poor taste. Steve’s is all in soft, warm greys, highlighted with bright blue, and Sam’s red t-shirt seems almost out of place.

Almost.

“Listen, man,” Sam says, leaning back against the granite-topped island in the middle of Steve’s vast kitchen. “You’re taking it pretty bad, and I get that - but this isn’t on you. You know that, don’t you?”

Steve does know, and somehow that makes it even worse. Sure, Bucky is an adult, an adult who is only just rediscovering his autonomy, but Steve hadn’t wanted to control him when he offered him a place on the team. He’d wanted to have Bucky back in his life, wanted to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with him once more, and hadn’t stopped to think that words like _compound_  and _combat_ might scare the living shit out of Buck. 

“Steve,” Sam says, pushing off and catching Steve by the shoulders. “He’s good, okay? He’s one of the scariest people in the whole damn world, he isn’t going to get mugged when he goes out to buy Pop-Tarts at two in the morning, he isn’t going to get stabbed coming home from a run in the park, and he probably isn’t going to get conned by a golddigger who wants his army backpay. You aren’t his keeper.”

It’s hard, though - Steve is used to being responsible for things. For himself, for the Howlies, for the Avengers, for all of Hydra and half the world. He doesn’t know how to let go, and letting go of Bucky so soon after getting him back? 

Impossible.

But he’s got to do it, or else he’ll end up letting everything else go, and he doesn’t want that. He’s lost a whole world once before, and he’s not going to risk it happening again.

“I know,” he sighs, setting his hands on Sam’s hips and drawing him in close. “I’ve been an asshole, haven’t I?”

“Absolutely,” Sam assures him. “But hey, even the Star-Spangled Man With A Plan needs an off day every now and then, so I _guess_  I can forgive you.”

“If I make apple pie?”

“While wearing that shirt with the bald eagle on it,” Sam agrees, letting his arms loop around Steve’s neck as he comes in snug to Steve’s chest. “The one Thor’s girlfriend’s assistant sent.”

“I am not wearing the eagle shirt,” Steve laughs, bowing his head just a little so he can nudge the tip of his nose to Sam’s. “But I _will_  wear the stars-and-stripes apron. Promise.”

“Now _that’s_ the kind of wholesome Americana I was hoping for when I got into this,” Sam says, laughing right against Steve’s mouth. “My own personal boy scout, as good for a booty call as a house call.”

“I still hate that phrase,” Steve reminds Sam, and then he kisses him. 

He loves kissing Sam - Sam, who pushes back, who _can_  push back, and who holds Steve’s jaw to guide the kiss as _he_  wants it. Sure, Steve has to be a little careful, but Sam is so confident that he makes sure it’s never such a big deal that Steve loses steam.

“I love you,” Steve says, tucking Sam _just_ a little closer against his chest. “You know that, right?”

Sam rolls his eyes, smiling as if they haven’t been making out like teenagers twice a day, every day, for months now, as if Steve hadn’t blurted out this same confession for the first time with a piece of car door the size of a pizza box buried three inches deep in his gut, as if this isn’t the big deal it feels. 

Because it is a big deal. Steve never thought he’d get another chance at this, when he woke up and the world had passed him by, and he loves Sam. More than anything, except maybe that song Clint’s Laura linked him on Facebook, _America, Fuck Yeah!,_ which makes him laugh every damn time. 

“I know, Steve,” Sam says, his smile softer now. “And you know it too, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “yeah, I do.”

And ain’t that just the darndest thing.


	5. Elizabeth/Norrington, "Sweet dreams"

The first time James wishes her a pleasant night’s sleep, he does not make her dreams his business. He is polite, and a little distant, as befits their relationship. She is a girl, hungry for adventure but trapped by soft stays and hard society, and he is as stiff as his starched wig, new in his responsibilities and afraid of overstepping before the governor, who is, after all, in his care.

So he says “Goodnight, Miss Swann,” and posts a guard to her door, and that is that. 

The next hundred times he bids her goodnight, it is all the same, changing only by the absence of a guard at her door. James often dines with them, her father’s favourite rising star and one of the few men in Port Royal who will speak to her as an adult, not as an extension of her father’s wealth an influence.

James speaks to her as an adult even before she _is_  an adult, and for that she will always hold him dear. 

When she does become an adult, James notices before anyone else, because for him it is a change - she has always been a woman to the people of Port Royal, particularly to its young, male population, but to James she has always been Miss Swann, not subject to such considerations as _girl_ and _woman_ , and he is thoroughly confused by the realisation that of all the women of his acquaintance, Elizabeth Swann is the one he considers paramount in all things. 

So after a ball where she danced once more than is proper with him, and once only with anyone else, James sends her off to bed with “Sweet dreams, Elizabeth,” in place of the austere “Goodnight, Miss Swann,” and she stretches up on her toes to kiss his cheek in giddy farewell.

He watches her dash up the stairs, and nearly jumps out his skin when the governor emerges from the salon.

“You’ve noticed, then,” he says, and James flushes from the top of his head to the bottom of his breastbone. “High time you did something about it, don’t you think?”

It takes him a year and two days, and when he asks, she falls from a great height. He takes it as a bad omen for their future.


End file.
